Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Richard Dawkins: If science worked like religion

Just recently I had to deal with this claim that science is no different than religion. The short answer is "no" - scientific claims have to be tested out (often by rival groups) to be accepted (there are other factors as well). But here is a timely and funny clip from Dawkins (tip 3quarksdaily). Enjoy!


8 comments:

Atif Khan said...

Dawkins is good

Brian said...

I'm worried that the president of the National Academy of Sciences might issue a fatwa. I hope it doesn't happen.

Muhammad Akbar Hussain said...

Unfortunately dear, the rival groups all belong to the same clan on a wider scale...all working in unison to give a religious touch to science, essentially ruining the original purpose or outcome of any scientific work, especialy those who have strong religious affiliation to atheism...essentially a new religion taking hold.
As an example, how many times we have read in textbooks that Miller-Urey experiment is a classical experiment about origin of LIFE, even though this experiment only explains the creation of some simple amino acids under highly controlled and predictable conditions, than anything else. A cell is much much more than just a random collection of organic molecules. It is a universe in its own with processes governed by infinitely complex laws of nature. The ingredients of a pizza explain WHAT is a pizza made up of, NOT HOW it was made. Leave the ingredients in a kitchen for 100 billion years and it won't make a pizza.
Same stands for evolution and other theories/facts/principles.

Muhammad Akbar Hussain said...

Dawkins is an utter idiot, trying to mingle two different things. Belief in a Universe creating itself, molecules deciding to come together to make a cell etc. is bigger a comedy than the circus by this fatuous jerk.
Let the science try to explain HOW the universe was made, and leave the search or question of WHY to the religion. As no single theory can claim to be perfect and complete, let it be with the religion too. To me, atheism...is a bigger leap of faith.

emre said...

Mr. Hussain,

You did not address to topic of Dawkins' presentation: the near-certain determination of one's religion by one's geography. In other words, it's an accident of birth.

JAMSHED MOIDU said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9VInZ-dEm4

emre said...

Jamshed,

Can you clarify what you mean by "information" of the genome? Is it entropy, complexity? If so, look right here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/302/5649/1401 or search for "evolution complexity genome"

It's certainly an interesting problem!

Ben Vallejo said...

Catholic dogma has to be tested by rival Church groups. See how the thingy with contraception goes. The Catholic Church gave birth to Science and yet Dawkins doesn't understand that you need a scientist's brain to make sense of it!

Powered by Blogger.